Will It Come? What the Bloomberg Administration Wills at Willets Point (Part IV)

(Continued from Part III)

Where the City Council Once Stood on the Bloomberg Administration’s Plan

On April 21, 2008, a majority of the New York City Council's members, 29 out of 51 City Council members not including Bloomberg’s ally, Speaker Quinn, expressed their "adamant opposition" to the proposed Willets Point redevelopment in writing to Robert Lieber, New York City Deputy Mayor for Economic Development. The opposition was led by City Councilman for the area, Hiram Monserrat. (Council Declares Willets Point Plan DOA, April 21, 2008.)

In August, even more City Council members (32 eventually) signed a letter strengthened by its statement of a principled stand against the use of eminent domain in the area:

A day before a City Planning Commission hearing on the Bloomberg administration’s plan to remake Willets Point, a majority of City Council members sent a sharply-worded letter to the planning commissioner opposing the project.

In the letter to Commissioner Amanda Burden, 30 council members say they are in “absolute opposition” to the current proposal to redevelop Willets Point, citing concerns over eminent domain, affordable housing, displaced workers and traffic.

“Unfortunately, this is a product of a flawed process that has continuously ignored the requests of the community in pursuit of a top-down planning process that sets a dangerous precedent for large-scale development projects citywide,” the council members wrote in the letter.
...

The signature drive was organized by the affordable housing group NY Acorn and is the second time in the last four months it has organized a majority of council members to write to a city official opposing Willets Point. Twenty-nine council members sent a similar letter to Deputy Mayor Robert Lieber in April.

This time, the council members say they will not support the plan unless eminent domain is taken off the table in negotiations with landowners; half of the 5,500 housing units are guaranteed to be affordable; a comprehensive relocation and compensation plan for small business owners and employees is put in place; and a community benefits agreement that includes traffic mitigation is implemented.

(See:, City Council members blast Willets Pt. plan, by Daniel Massey, Crain's NY Business, August 12, 2008.)

No Land Grab’s Prescience on ACORN

In passing along an extract of the Crain’s article above, No Land Grab presciently commented as follows:

. . .we have to admit we're curious about ACORN's role. Sure, their interest in the affordable housing makes sense, but based on their track record with Atlantic Yards, we have a hard time believing that they give a hoot about the use of eminent domain. Left to ACORN, that would surely be a bargaining chip happily traded for a richer mix of affordable units.

(See: No Land Grab, August 12, 2008)

Come this November the City Council voted to support a city administration plan that will use eminent domain. As No Land Grab predicted ACORN swung over to support the plan. Though the plan calls for eminent domain actually to be used, it is important to remember that the threat of eminent domain, which is very little different, has been already used by the city in negotiating deals it has reached to oust owners thus far.

Principle for Principle’s Sake or for the Sake of Haggling

There is a value to adhering to principle for principle's sake. Principles should only give ground to competing principles. Otherwise the abandonment of principle tends to leave things confused. It is often illustrated with a famous little anecdote supposed to have involved remarks variously ascribed to the wit of George Bernard Shaw, Winston Churchill or W. C. Fields. Whomever it was, the wit is supposed to have asked his female dinner companion if, for a million pound/dollars, she would sleep with him. The woman indicates her willingness to assent to the proposition. “For five pounds/dollars?” he follows up. “What do you take me for?”replies the woman aghast. The wit responds, “We have established what you are, madam. We are now merely haggling over the price.”

When the City Council opposed the use of eminent domain at Willets Point they did so enunciating a principle. The City Council did not set this principle aside because it succumbed in the face of another principle, they set it aside because in the end they were apparently only haggling over a price as we shall discuss.

The Value of Opposing Eminent Domain Abuse on Principle: Adam Smith’s Guiding Invisible hand vs. the City’s Hidden Hand of Developer Relationships

There are reasons to vigorously oppose eminent domain abuse based on principle. It ensures equity and justice. By promoting just compensation neutrally negotiated in the market place, it assures that Adam Smith’s invisible hand will help guide things. Using eminent domain in New York, especially with this city administration, removes matters from the impartial guidance of that invisible hand. The hands into which matters are delivered are those of government that work unseen in another sense because a lack of transparency obscures what they do. Aside from fictional negotiating positions, there is the promotion of agenda which have to be questioned due to problematically close relations the administration has with big developers. (See: Wednesday, October 22, 2008, Are the Atlantic Yards Land Grab and City Official Fraud Being Used to Finance Bloomberg’s Bid for Billionaire Term Limit Exceptionalism?)


The Price Placed on Principle Was Not High

When the haggling was all over, what was the price that the City Council, and ACORN associated with it, considered acceptable such that the opposition to eminent domain abuse should not prevail? Did an important principle and the Willets Point businesses get abandoned for a high or low price? The Willet Point redevelopment is a mixed-use development. Part of it will be residential. The idea that an extra 15% of the residential units that will be set aside for higher income families making less than 130 percent of the city’s median income does not seem as if the City Council and ACORN held out for a substantial price. We are looking at two thousand jobs lost in exchange for just a few apartments for a few above-average-income families. The apartments are perhaps not so different from units the market might have provided anyway. The skimpy sell-out is a reminder to beware should eminent domain ever be headed your way.

ACORN’s Eagerness to Broker Deals: a Poor Ally That Sells out the Community Too Fast

ACORN is supposed to be representing the interests of low-income working people. In theory they should care about the jobs of those currently working in Willets Point. We have noted in prior writing that ACORN does not seem to set a very high price on selling out the community interest. They seem more interested in being on the in when “deals” are brokered. The interest they have in being perceived as key to the brokering of deals causes them to opt in on deals which they should reject out of principle. (See: Saturday, June 28, 2008, Selling out the Community for Beans (A Giant Wrong) and Thursday, July 31, 2008, A Proper Relationship with the Host?) ACORN’s eagerness to be in on brokering deals may make it an unreliable ally; it is likely to be the first to break ranks to embrace questionable deals. (See: Friday, July 18, 2008, National ACORN's (episode of) scandal, and NY ACORN's dubious Brooklyn stadium deal (in 2000).)

Latest News On ACORN: Hidden Undisclosed Major Conflict of Interest

There is recent major news about why ACORN may be an unreliable defender of a community’s interest. It is possible for ACORN to have very significant conflicts of interest that go undisclosed. The story crops up in the context of Brooklyn’s proposed Atlantic Yards megadevelopment. In theory, ACORN, which signed a so-called Community Benefits Agreement (CBA), is supposed to be enforcing that agreement for the benefit of the community. In actuality, that isn’t possible because, as discussed in the articles last linked to above, ACORN didn’t properly represent the community and didn’t negotiate any true benefit for it. It now turns out that months ago ACORN further impaired its ability to act on behalf of the community by taking an undisclosed “grant and (low-interest) loan worth $1.5 million” from developer Forest City Ratner, the very same party against whom it is supposed to be enforcing the CBA for the community’s interest. For more on this major unfolding story see: With $1.5M grant/loan, FCR bails out national ACORN, parent of major CBA partner, Tuesday, December 02, 2008.

Hiram Monserrat: What Could He Have Been Thinking When He Sold Out?

The City Council vote followed the tradition of the Council voting in accordance with the vote of the City Councilman from the area in question. It was therefore key when Councilman Hiram Monserrat switched from opposition to support for the plan and its use of eminent domain. (It resulted in a 42-to-2 vote to approve the plan, with one abstention.) Monserrat led the switch-over based on the provision of the additional 15% units. The 15% additional units will probably be subsidized so it can be asserted that by negotiating for them Councilman Hiram Monserrat has brought extra subsidy into his district (and away from others). Still, had residential units been built instead over the parking lots next to the stadium or over the train yards, this additional benefit, such as it is, could have been directed there.

We should note that the commendable no votes against the plan were those of Tony Avella (D-Bayside) and Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn).

Councilman Monserrat was in the minority of city council members who recently voted to oppose an extension of term limits for the Mayor and the City Council. That principled vote on term limits was a courageous one because it was clear that council members in the minority were expected to pay a price for their opposition. Bloomberg and Quinn were using strong-arm tactics to get the third term the Mayor was pursuing. Council members voting against were expecting to lose committee chairmanship appointments and funding for their area as a result. It is interesting to reflect whether Councilman Monserrat was expecting to recoup from the Mayor and Quinn what he sacrificed in his principled term limits vote via his subsequent, we would say, unprincipled vote in favor of the administration’s Willets Point plan. It is fascinating to wonder whether in this indirect way the term limits fight helped advance the Willets Point plan.

Willets Point Community Riled by Monserrat

The resident business owners of Willets Point were riled enough by Montserrat’s vote abandoning principle so that they painted over his name on the campaign bus. (Mayor, Monserrate Reach Agreement Over Willets Point, by: NY1 News, 11/13/2008)

The Wilets Point owners may have felt entitled to support since they did repair work on the bus in expectation that there would be coordination involving the use of the vehicle for activist opposition purposes. One of them was arrested in connection with the incident afterward. (See: Olaya held by police after removing Monserrate’s name from truck, by Stephen Stirling, November 24, 2008)

Political Kabuki Dance “Forgetting” After Doing the Mayor’s Bidding

Ironically, right after the Wednesday 11/13 Willets Point vote giving the Bloomberg administration exactly what it wanted, Christine Quinn and the City Council made a big show of standing up to the mayor on some budget-cutting matters with a Thursday 11/14 press conference. It had New York Times writing about Speaker Quinn’s “harsh language that she seldom uses about Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg” and wondering at the outset of the article:

The unusually sharp criticism of the mayor by Ms. Quinn drew attention at City Hall. And it left some members of the Council and other city officials wondering: Was Ms. Quinn simply speaking out about issues she feels strongly about? Or was she trying to shore up her support among council members in the aftermath of the bitter term limits battle?

(See: Quinn Vehemently Denounces Bloomberg’s Plans, by David W. Chen and Fernanda Santos, November 14, 2008.)

For Noticing New York’s own musings about the Christine Quinn’s choreographing of political Kabuki dance to induce forgetfulness about the way she has been joined at the hip with the mayor and pushed the mayor’s desired term limit package, see the “Political Kabuki Dance to Induce Forgetting” headed section in Remembering; Not Forgetting in Chinatown, Tuesday, November 4, 2008.

Knowing What Really May Be Right

A new 75-acre neighborhood, 80% the size of Battery Park City, is an overwhelming undertaking. To assess the merit of what is proposed involves absorbing a huge amount of information. It would be presumptuous to say that Noticing New York is exactly right about all the conclusions we are tending toward here.

Cues From the Community - Communities?

Normally we would defer heavily to the community. There has reportedly been some community involvement in preparing the Willets Point redevelopment plan. We have not spent much time assessing the quality of that community input, but it seems to have come primarily from the residents of Downtown Flushing who recognize that the Willets Point is isolated from it as a separate neighborhood. The community input which is being acted upon is not coming from the businesses of Willets Point as represented by the Willets Point Industry and Realty Association.

For description about the “community involvement” that is being recognized by the city you can go to Downtownflushing.com. The results of what community involvement there has been is, according to the city EDC Downtownflushing.com documents, the work of the “Downtown Flushing Task Force . . .comprised of various city and state technical agencies, Flushing developers and business owners, Queens Community Board #7, and local elected officials” and community outreach the highlight of which was “was a two-day public workshop, held on February 20-21, 2003." That produced a report that said that devolvement goals with respect to Willets Point included improving the visual experience of Willets Point:

Achieving the redevelopment goals for the Flushing River waterfront and Downtown Flushing requires improving the visual experience of Willets Point, . . .

Yes, it also included other standard catch phrases like upgrading “environmental quality” and expanding its role “as an economic driver in the area” but Downtown Flushing’s desire to improve the “visual experience” of a separate neighborhood their view of which is mostly obscured by the elevated highways has to make one think. Should we suspect that there is a certain amount of NIMBYism, given that we are dealing with scrap metal and car part recycling “junkyard” businesses?

Sense of What We Might Get

No doubt the idea of a pristine new neighborhood descending full blown from the sky presents a pretty picture just like in the renderings. Like Brasília, the place would come out of the mind of planners and by virtue of significant public expenditure and intervention. Though the new neighborhood would be 80% the size of Battery Park City, the renderings available are few, perhaps fewer than are sometimes done for a developer’s single new signature building. We have to note though that those drawings that have been rendered with any precision do a good job of making even surrounding elevated highways look like an attractive part of the environment. Will it be WYSIWYG, (“What you see is what you get”)? Also consider what one would hear and breath. Like ourselves, the Municipal Art Society worries that the experience of the highways with their associated noise pollution and emissions and will be a problem for residential residents.


Direction of Resources in Willets Point When the Future Comes

It is not justifiable comfort to say, if the Willets Point businesses are eventually removed from Willets Point, that we then would prefer to see public resources poured into the reconstruction of the Willets Point area rather than into a much more destructive project like Atlantic Yards. Atlantic Yards, is after all a project that will be massively destructive not only in its demolition phase but also in all its construction phases as well.

Our more serious concern is that rather than pouring resources into a Willets Point rebuilding, we will subside into limbo. Just because projects are approved or demolition begun does not mean that projects proceed. Not far away, another project involving the former Flushing Airport was undertaken and abandoned by the Bloomberg administration. This was 2004 so it was quite recent in terms of megadevelopment time scales (See: Abandonment of the plan to develop the old Flushing Airport; City Defers Development of Wholesale Center, by Winnie Hu and Colin Moynihan, October 17, 2004) Though demolition was begun, facts change, opposition and environmental concerns were weighed differently; the Bloomberg administration has now indefinitely postponed and has no other plans for the redevelopment of 26-acre site of the former Flushing Airport.

The Willets Point businesses are preparing to defend themselves legally, but it is quite possible they will only seek a better relocation deal. (See: Tenant businesses lawyer up, make game plan, by Stephen Stirling, November 19, 2008) With lack of support and weakened by the city’s divide-and-conquer tactics, it is possible the current community of businesses will largely cease to exist and that no redevelopment efforts will thereafter replace what is missing. It might be that we do not build on the existing parking lots because we love their prairie expanse more than environmentally recycling junkyards, and in the end, with the junkyards torn down, get an even greater expanse of parking lots.

False Steps; Eminent Domain

Whatever the merits of the project which we might find debatable, we are certain that it was a false step to abandon principled opposition to the use of the use eminent domain that is going to force these private-ownership to private-ownership transfers. When eminent domain is used people are desensitized to the actual economic trade-offs in decisions being made. One is left instead wading through, as stand-ins, the suspiciously boosterish figures of an administration that constantly errs on the side of promoting big-developer interests. Nothing sharpens the mind like the avoidance of eminent domain, sharpening focus on the realistic superiority of alternatives. Given the way things work, avoidance of eminent domain therefore winds up being abandoned as a principle not by hard-nosed realists but by fantasists.

In the case of Willets Point, opposition to eminent domain was abandoned by the City Council (and ACORN) with no countervailing principle in mind and for the very small price of a few residential units (15%) for some a families with higher-than-average incomes. At the same time the City Council and ACORN may not even get what they think they were bargaining for because they inadequately questioned the realism of the Bloomberg administration’s plans.

There is a similarly disconcerting fantastical aspect to the city’s embrace of single big-developer megadevelopment. The city abdicates public responsibility for vast acreage in the unrealistic hope that private developers will, over the course of decades, exercise monopolistic control to serve the public interest more reliably than an accountable government.

The Fruit of the Future

After seven years the Bloomberg administration has not yet been in office long enough for its most grandly conceived, huge-scale real estate megadeal mistakes to come to fruition. Some mistakes like the Jets Stadium on the West Side of Manhattan were intercepted early enough. There is a chance, of course, that Willets Point will overcome all the obvious challenges and turn out better than should reasonably be expected. If the project proceeds, we will certainly hope for the best. Nevertheless, wishing won’t ever make it so.

Willets Point could one day provide one more unpalatable taste of the multiple failures that the Bloomberg administration, if it continues in office, will be ushering in. We strongly suspect that we could find ourselves looking back, with after-the-fact regret, to bemoan the mistake of crushing of a community of jobs and scrap metal and car part businesses that had not outlived their usefulness . . . crushed before their time and before we really knew what would be worthwhile and viable replacements.

Choice Discussions: Modifying the Grand Army Plaza of Olmsted and Vaux

The Design Trust for Public Space has now announced the “People's Choice Award” in its “Reinventing Grand Army Plaza” design competition. We earlier looked at the submissions in terms of overall principles: Sunday, October 5, 2008, Modifying the Grand Army Plaza of Olmsted and Vaux.

Leonard Lopate Show Discussions

There was a very worthwhile discussion of the competition and redesign issues on last Thursday’s Leonard Lopate show. Visiting the show’s website, I picked up on the fact that there had been a longer discussion on a prior program (February 6, 2008) which I recommend for those wanting to reflect on these issues in depth.

The October 9th discussion was with Deborah Marton, who is executive director of the Design Trust for Public Space, and Shin-pei Tsay (of Transportation Alternatives), who was involved in submitting a design called "A Parade for Brooklyn: Cultivating Local Flavor for Grand Army Plaza." Her design got an honorable mention in the competition. The half-hour February 6th discussion, again with Deborah Marton, included Tupper Thomas, President of the Board of the Prospect Park Alliance and Administrator of Prospect Park.

In following up I’d like to concentrate on certain of the proposed solutions for dealing with the traffic patterns in Grand Army Plaza, particularly on proposed reconfigurations that turn Grand Army Plaza into a peninsula of extended park space off Prospect Park. There was also discussion about, and relevant to, the proposed Atlantic Yards megadevelopment which I will review before concluding.

People’s Choice Award to “Canopy”

The People’s Choice award went to “Canopy”, an intricate design that works with a treatment of Flatbush Avenue and its Eastern Parkway connection as a main thoroughfare and covers it over with elevated green park. Canopy, by Anne-Sophie Coué, Christian Matteau, Stephane Mauget and Chrystelle Sanaa of Nantes, France, was also tied for first place as part of the earlier formal competition by a panel of judges.

Canopy eliminates the West Drive roads that now provide car traffic into and out of Prospect Park, allowing Grand Army Plaza to become a peninsula off Prospect Park. (More on this later). Vanderbilt Avenue, Union Street and Prospect Park West would lose their more direct connection to Flatbush and Eastern Parkway, pushing traffic out into the encircling Plaza Streets (East and West) which have been serving as quieter residential streets. Covering over Flatbush allows a maximum extension for pedestrians of the plan’s newly created peninsula off Prospect Park. The expense of covering over Flatbush probably makes this plan a less likely proposition. Nevertheless, covering Flatbush in some way is probably instinctively attractive to all us. As the Thursday Lopate discussion noted, submerging roads below grade in the area is not practical since there are subways running under the plaza. Elevating the park to cover the roads is possible but still expensive.

Grand Army Plaza as a Green Peninsular Extension of Prospect Park

Transforming Grand Army Plaza into a peninsula off Prospect Park is an attractive proposition that more than one competition submission took up. The idea would be that you could walk from the park to the plaza and reach its triumphal arch without having to cross any car-trafficked roads. Pedestrian walks and bike lanes would still flow where it might make sense. The Grand Army Plaza oval is between Park Slope and Prospect Heights. Big roads tend to divide neighborhoods. Conversely, pedestrian paths and bikeways serve to knit them together.

The idea of making Grand Army Plaza into a peninsula off Prospect Park cannot be implemented unless the West Drive roads in and out of Prospect Park are either eliminated or closed to car traffic. Elimination would be consistent with the evolving consensus that car traffic in Prospect Park should be either reduced or eliminated. The West Drive roads traveling longitudinally through both the plaza oval and the neck of the park’s entrance absorb a huge amount of space, so elimination would provide a big pay-off in acreage that would possibly be associated with a lot of greening.

Turning Grand Army Plaza into a peninsula off Prospect Park also is not possible without severing roads that complete the traffic circle loop, such as the stretch of road that allows Union Street and others to flow east to Eastern Parkway and to Flatbush Avenue headed south.

"A Parade for Brooklyn” Honorably Mentioned

The design "A Parade for Brooklyn: Cultivating Local Flavor for Grand Army Plaza" by Lori Marie Gibbs and the above mentioned Ms. Shin-pei Tsay is somewhat similar to Canopy, similarly treating Flatbush Avenue and its Eastern Parkway connection as a main thoroughfare. It gives the roads a similar course through the plaza. The design pays attention to better accommodating the farmer’s market that uses the open space just outside the park by its McKim, Mead, and White designed central gates. Unlike the Canopy design, there would be no covering over of roads. Similar to Canopy, it eliminates the West Drive car roads into and out of Prospect Park, but it doesn’t go all the way to take advantage of this because it doesn’t turn the plaza into a connected park peninsula. Instead it leaves the circle of traffic intact flowing all around the plaza. The design would push a lot of traffic out to the quiet Plaza Streets which become the new traffic circle.

Achieving a Peninsular Extension by Replacing Current Traffic Circle With a “Traffic U”


Tied for first place with the Canopy design was “Please Wake Me Up!” by Guillaume Derrien and Gauthier le Romancer of Paris, France. Please Wake Me Up! is most worthwhile for the traffic design it creates that turns the inner plaza (not the entire plaza) into a peninsular extension of Prospect Park.

Basic Benefits

Except for the design’s interruption of the traffic circle pattern that currently makes a complete circuit around the interior roads of the plaza, the design is surprisingly similar to the presently used version of the Olmsted and Vaux design. Also, like Canopy and Parade for Brooklyn, car access into Prospect Park on the West Drive in and out of the park would be eliminated. The design would keep in place the raised berms that surround the plaza with their sound-baffling effect for the outer residential area. The design would also be good in that it would not tend to push a substantial amount of traffic flow out to the quieter encircling residential Plaza Streets.

Substantially Different Traffic Flow

The new, U-shaped flow of traffic under the plan would be substantially different from the current flow. Among other things, it would tend to quiet traffic substantially. It maintains all the connections between major traffic arteries. Those connections might be less flowing, but that would contribute to the quieting effect. Substantially less overall space would be devoted to roadway, particularly because of the elimination of the West Drives. There is some opportunity for further shaving down the design’s roadway space though automobile-centric advocates might argue for going the other way.

The circle-replacing design makes its U-shape traffic pattern work by flowing traffic in two directions around the plaza. Bidirectional roads would calm traffic. The plan also changes directions of some surrounding streets.

Plaza Street East would flow in the direction opposite to what it does now but it would remain substantially as quiet and little-used. It would no longer take in traffic from St. John’s place and it would take in Flatbush traffic from its southern end rather than from the north.

Prospect Park West would flow two ways instead of just southerly. Again, as noted, two-way streets tend to be quieter. It would also make Prospect Park West less attractive as a speedway to those rushing down from Flatbush Avenue.

Union Street looks as if it would become a one-way street going only southwesterly.

A Fat vs. Rectilinear Interior Plaza

On paper the plan lays out the interior plaza peninsula with pleasing rectilinearity. It is probably a mistake to do so because it shrinks the peninsula. The surrounding streets will be quieted, but the surrounding traffic and its noise will be uncomfortably distracting because of its closeness to the center plaza. As a practical matter, in the immediate term, a preponderance of the inner plaza’s trees and shade would be lost. Double rows of mature 60-year-old trees on each side of the interior plaza would be sacrificed. Making the plaza smaller than what it could be if a more buffering fat oval were retained would deal with noise less effectively. Further, any green space that cleaves to the inner sides of the berms will be used less effectively than green space that fattens the interior plaza.

A general fattening of the interior plaza with a more organic shape of the roads would be preferable. In addition, fattening might allow other opportunities to add to and collect green spaces together with the larger pedestrian spaces. It might allow for some moderate berms and other sound-baffling features around the inner plaza. Perhaps thought should even be given to eliminating entirely the sidewalk that currently travels inside the existing berms and reallocating that space to the interior plaza. The berms with their elevated height could be used to launch access walkways into the plaza, elevated over arches. These could be built at the end of a phased-in redesign.

The Hugely Wide Eastern Parkway and Its Greenwway

Looking at the proposed U-shaped traffic pattern, the relative size of the six-lane Eastern Parkway looks huge. In the plan Eastern Parkway is shown as six lanes. Eastern Parkway once met the plaza with six principal lanes. Currently, Eastern Parkway joins the plaza with five+ principal lanes (three west-bound lanes, two east-bound and a wide lane-dividing space) plus, in addition to those five principle lanes Eastern Parkway has laminated next to it an adjacent residential service street. This service street is five lanes wide when it joins the plaza. Two lanes are used for parking and in the center there is space without lane markings wide enough for three cars to stand abreast before entering the plaza. In other places the service road is only four lanes wide. In all, that is the equivalent of more than ten lanes of Eastern Parkway traffic at the entrance of the plaza.


There may be a superabundance of roadway but the Eastern Parkway greenway that was also designed by Olmstead and Vaux stops unfortunately short, missing the opportunity to make it all the way to connect with Prospect Park. The full greenway stops just east of the Brooklyn Museum. A version of the greenway, a 50% echo, runs the short stretch of blocks traveling in front of the Brooklyn Museum, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and adjacent park. The greenway stops entirely across the street from the architecturally beautiful public library.

Clearly there is an opportunity to widen, improve and connect the greenway to the plaza, going west from the Brooklyn Museum.

The Lopate Discussions and Traffic

The Lopate show discussions are interesting if you want to pick up fascinating historical trivia about the plaza and its design, including how many time the arch and plaza have been renovated. The city Department of Transportation spent $400,000 on plaza renovations as recently as the fall of 2007 (video available). I didn’t know, for instance, that Grand Army Plaza was once the location of Brooklyn’s “death-o-meter”, which in 1927 posted the borough’s traffic accident figures to discourage fast or careless driving.

More important, it is refreshing to hear discussed at length on the public airwaves the kind of informed urban design concerns that were being discussed on the Leonard Lopate show. After all, the plaza is a central Brooklyn landmark and symbol encompassing a total of 11 acres. In the more recent program there was nuanced discussion of the value of keeping all the plaza uses on one level. It was suggested that interaction of mixed uses would quiet the car traffic by buffering it with other uses.

The handling of the car traffic is key to making the 11 acres work. Traffic is, in fact, the `driving’ need for redesign. In both Lopate discussions it was emphasized that the reason that the Grand Army Plaza design needs to be addressed is that things changed since it was designed by Olmsted and Vaux: The automobile was invented.

The Two Lopate Discussions and Atlantic Yards

In my last post on the competition I noted that the UNITY plan, a preferential plan for the development of the Vanderbilt Railyards (instead of the foundering Atlantic Yards plan), presciently took the Vanderbilt Railyards’ relationship with Grand Army Plaza into consideration. (The UNITY plan envisions creating a new public square to the north on Flatbush Avenue.) The two Lopate program discussions were interesting for their discussion of how the proposed Atlantic Yards interrelates with Grand Army Plaza. We were, after all, listening to people thinking about urban planning issues.

The First Show- Traffic-Considerations

Clearly, there is an immediate link in terms of traffic handling. Flatbush Avenue flows through Grand Army Plaza and because it also flows by Atlantic Yards would flow through the new plaza to the north suggested by the UNITY plan. (BTW: I think we may be able to look forward to a community-sponsored competition for that new plaza.) Vanderbilt Avenue also flows through Grand Army Plaza as well as right past the Vanderbilt Railyards.

(Some references in terms of scale might be important. The proposed Atlantic Yards site is only 40% over the Vanderbilt Railyards site. It is interesting to note that, at about 11 acres, Grand Army Plaza is 25% larger than Vanderbilt Yards and about half the acreage of what Ratner proposes as his AY footprint. You can, as an interesting exercise, imagine 50% of the 22 acre Atlantic Yards being squeezed into the plaza area by imagining eight crazy Gehry-style skyscrapers plus a one-half of a Nets arena squeezed into the area. The buildings, should be imagined as ranging from 51 stories (previously and maybe again 60) down to buildings in the 20-story range. They would mostly be at the taller end of this range. For quick reference, the new 114-unit Richard Meier building going up on the plaza which has set-backs is just 15 stories. It Makes you wonder what the left-over and shadowed Atlantic Yards green open-space would be like!)

The current flow of car traffic past the Atlantic Yards site, particularly on Flatbush is already a significant problem which the arrival of the currently proposed version of Atlantic Yards will make substantially worse. (See: Atlantic Yards Report; Thursday, August 21, 2008, 60,000 vehicles daily at Flatbush and Atlantic? A closer look; Tuesday, February 20, 2007 Marty said “get real” on traffic/parking, but ESDC didn’t agree much and the New York Times; A Traffic Knot, Pulling Tighter, By Nicholas Confessore, January 8, 2006.)

The first Lopate conversation discussed the traffic relationship, observing on the air (at 23:13 in the broadcast), that a listener named Andrew posted a comment raising the problem:

I welcome the efforts of the design trust to rethink Grand Army Plaza. We have to do it now before the Atlantic Yards mess brings an additional 10-15k cars into the neighborhood each day.

Lopate said he was sure that this was something that would have to be thought about. His guests agreed, noting that a traffic study would have to be done. Would the U-shaped traffic pattern of “Please Wake Me Up!” have a beneficial effect on upstream Atlantic Yards traffic? These things will certainly need to be thought about.

First Show: Brooklyn Development

Atlantic Yards was mentioned three times in the February 06, 2008 show. In the discussion participants used an almost respectful tone about the megadevelopment, referring to it as if its prospects were reasonably definite. It should be borne in mind that Lopate’s discussion guests were, at the time, clearly fishing for money and cooperation from the city (and perhaps elsewhere). There were innumerable respectful references to the city agencies whose cooperation had been obtained for the plaza project and one remark provoked Tupper Thomas to remark how she would be “thrilled with $30 million.” This might explain why neither of Lopate’s guests offered the kind of negative aside about Atlantic Yards one ought to expect from people sensitive to and involved with good urban design.

Atlantic Yards, when it was mentioned, was mentioned as a reason the Grand Army Plaza needed to be addressed. Lopate brought it up first (at 13:23 in the broadcast), saying that Atlantic Yards “isn’t all that far away” and “will change the whole look of Brooklyn.” Tupper Thomas (probably thinking of the incredible immensity of Ratner’s Atlantic Yards) responded, indicating that she had given thought to whether the undesirable height of Atlantic Yards project would negatively threaten the plaza and Prospect Park. She explained defensively that “we are much higher up,” and that as one of the “highest points in Brooklyn . . .we will still have fabulous views straight down to Manhattan.” (Really? The Williamsburg Savings Bank rises up if you look down Flatbush.)

Earlier in the program Ms. Marton had been pointing out the very brisk pace of Brooklyn development, giving statistics on how many building permits were being issued every day. The next time that Atlantic Yards was brought up, Leonard Lopate was noting optimistically how funding ought to be readily available. Ms. Marton responded, attempting to confirm this optimism, citing the “energy in the borough” and the “intensity of development”, listing development projects, including others that could be considered controversial (Coney Island and Domino) (at 17:55). She spoke about “a groundswell to have Grand Army Plaza realize its potential.” In this vein, the importance of Brooklyn as a tourist destination was also invoked.

Second Show: Brooklyn Development

The second Lopate discussion last week was different. There was no direct mention of Atlantic Yards. With the passage of the intervening eight months, Atlantic Yards is increasingly recognized as an undefined and ever more unlikely project. There was mention, however, of how successful Prospect Heights is. Mr. Lopate was talking about the effect of the plaza’s design on its division of Prospect Heights from Park Slope (at 10:50). He observed how we are seeing “much more gentrification of Prospect Heights” and suggested that Prospect Heights will “probably look like Park Slope.” Park Slope was named in 2007 by the American Planning Association as one of America’s 10 great neighborhoods “for its architectural and historical features and its diverse mix of residents and businesses, all of which are supported and preserved by its active and involved citizenry.” (See: New York Times, Park Slope and 125th Street Are Named ‘Great Places’, by Sewell Chan October 4, 2007.)

Lopate noted that “On Prospect Park”, the new aforementioned Richard Meier designed building on the plaza, was very-high-priced housing. The last time we checked it contained the second most expensive apartments in Brooklyn, second only to "One Brooklyn Bridge Park" being built under the BQE at 360 Furman Street in what is the new Brooklyn Bridge Park.. There was no mention in the discussion that Atlantic Yards-induced blight has actually forestalled development activity that was underway in Prospect Heights near the yards. Newly renovated buildings are intended to be demolished and Atlantic Yards will also dislocate existing low-income tenants.

Second Show: Money, Time and Planning

The second discussion, occurring only last week, naturally dealt with the economic downturn and the implicit difficulty in obtaining funds in this new environment (at 13:15). The suggestion was made that slow economic times are a good time for urban planning because urban planning is “not a fast activity” and times like these afford a “chance to give proper thought” to what is being done. It was pointed out that Grand Army Plaza is iconic and has every asset so that there is no reason why it should not be a showplace of the borough. That’s pretty much what I think when I look at the Williamsburg Savings Bank sitting beside Vanderbilt Railyards. Let’s hope we take the opportunity to give proper thought to Grand Army Plaza (as the city seems willing to do) and to designs for Atlantic Yards/Vanderbilt Railyards (which the city has not been willing to do).

Future Grand Army Plaza Community Meetings

Reinventing Grand Army Plaza competition submissions will no longer be on display in Grand Army Plaza after Monday, October 13th, but the Grand Army Plaza Coalition (GAPCo), which coordinated with the Design Trust to create the competition, will be hosting community meetings to discuss what should be done. GAPCo’s website has a number of elucidating videos and other resources. At the community meetings it will be possible to make suggestions that take the best ideas from all the plans.

A recent Brooklyn Paper article discussing the plans, A winning vision for Grand Army Plaza, by Sarah Portlock, October 10, 2008, is also available for reference.

Modifying the Grand Army Plaza of Olmsted and Vaux

Today, Sunday, October 5, (Sunday?) is the deadline for the public to cast its votes respecting proposals for how Grand Army Plaza might be redesigned.

The proposals have been solicited in a contest by Design Trust for Public Space. See also: How Would You Reinvent Grand Army Plaza? by Brad Aaron


The proposals are on view at their site and also in the very center of Grand Army Plaza itself.

The proposals are numerous and not easy to take in and evaluate at either site. Evaluating them to vote is not a quick proposition. Deciding which are the best will take anybody a fair amount of time. Noticing New York is not going to deliver a verdict in favor of particular proposal but will note that not all of the proposals selected as winners by the separately conducted vote of an official panel of judges should have won.

Olmsted and Vaux

Rather than try to select the best plan, it is better to deal in general principles. It should also be noted that NOT among the competing entries was one that should have been: the original design by Olmsted and Vaux. We may not be able to do better than that and, if we can’t, we shouldn’t be cavalier about modifying it.

However excellent that original plan may be, the suggestion that we give some attention to modifying the design of Grand Army Plaza is a superb idea. The plaza could work better than it currently does. What doesn’t work well now probably has less to do with the original Olmsted and Vaux design than with the advent of the automobile.

What Works Now



Here are the ways the current design of the plaza works well:

1. Noticing New York has previously cited how excellently the raised berms (the tree-planted hills) on the sides of the plaza serve to attenuate noise on the residential streets that surround the plaza. (See: Wednesday, July 23, 2008, Sound Abatement / Highway Noise Attenuation Measures.)

2. The berms are bordered on the outer edges of the plaza by encircling streets (Plaza Street, East and West). These streets intercept and provide access (with a cul-dul-sac style handling) five spoking quieter streets: St. John’s Place (East), Lincoln Place, Berkeley Place, Butler Place and St. John’s Place (West). (Just one of these spokes, St. John’s Place coming from the west, also allows a driver access into the busy center of the plaza.) The berms and Plaza Streets serve to separate the traffic of those intercepted quieter streets from the busier thoroughfares intersecting at the plaza. At the same time this keeps the quieter streets quiet and prevents what would otherwise be an unmanageable tangle of roads.

3. The Plaza Streets’ interception of the quieter streets also creates a lot of contiguous flowing plaza parkland-berm that would not otherwise be possible.

4. The Plaza Streets also gather and allow for the collective feeding of the intercepted quiet streets into what functions as the center traffic circle of the inner plaza.



5. The plaza manages to accommodate with reasonably effective interplay the intersection of spokes for the following ten routes, six of them 2-way and only one of them not major:
a. Flatbush Avenue (2-way from and to the north)
b. Flatbush Avenue (2-way from and to the south)
c. Union Street (2-way from and to the north)
d. Vanderbilt Avenue (2-way from and to the north)
e. Eastern Parkway (2-way from and to the east)
f. West Drive going into Prospect Park (2-way from and to the south)
g. Prospect Park West (1-way to the south)
h. Plaza Street East (1-way from the north)
i. Plaza Street West (1-way from the west)
j. St. John’s Place (1-way from the west). This is the only street which is not a major route and the effect of this intersecting non-major road is slightly less because some traffic turning onto Plaza Street (West) is siphoned away without going into the plaza center.



6. The plaza has the gracious central landmark arch.

7. The plaza has the superb central interior space and sculptural fountain.

8. The plaza serves as a cue and an extension for Prospect Park, which it abuts.

What Doesn’t Work Now

Here are the ways the current design of the plaza is not working well:

1. The central portions of the plaza, shackled in a fast-moving ring of traffic, are almost impossible to reach.

2. The traffic that encircles the plaza center subjects the plaza to an inordinate amount of noise. The level of noise is more extreme because the traffic moves fast and there are no features comparable to the berms to help abate the sound.

3. There is a huge amount of wasted space inside and alongside the main interior traffic circle. This can easily be seen if you study the Google Earth picture. Much space is wasted because the streets of the interior traffic circle have been designed like highway cloverleafs with the gentlest curves possible that encourage acceleration to high speeds.

4. The landmark arch is not connected with any thematic formality to the nearby central fountain area even though there are no roads separating them.

5. Neither the interior plaza nor the encircling park berm areas connect to Prospect Park as well as they could. This also has to do with how the area abutting the Prospect Park entrance (used for the local farmers market) integrates with the plaza space.

6. Even if area visitors do not succeed in physically accessing the plaza’s interior, that interior has ornamental value when seen from afar. Unfortunately, the extreme visual clutter of the roadways detracts from the appreciation that is possible in this regard.

7. The plaza could also interrelate better with the adjacent plaza space belonging to the public library.

Possibilities for Improvement

What are some of the things that could be done? Some of the competing plans may or may not comport in some ways with the list of suggestion below.

1. The interior plaza design should be less accommodating to a high speed flow of the major routes moving through it. Slowing down the traffic that moves through the inner plaza will reduce noise. Most traffic noise is tire noise and tire noise is always substantially greater as speed picks up. All the major routes that flow through the plaza are inner-city routes that are typically slowed to a normal city pace by traveling through intersections. There is no reason why traffic in the plaza should not be kept at or below these normal speeds. Instead the roads, with fewer intersections and gentle curves, are designed so that traffic can accelerate while moving through what should a green idyll. Slowing and quieting the traffic for this short stretch should not significantly diminish overall car trip times.

2. Curtailing and eliminating the gentle curves that now accommodate the car traffic will offer opportunities for reconnecting, greening, making sense out of and minimizing the currently wasted spaces within the plaza.



3. The improvements that would be most dramatic but also most expensive involve allowing the central plaza to connect with the park space in the surrounding berms by putting a lot of the inner roadway below the park with grade changes. This could be done by submerging the roads. Or, because the berms are elevated landscape, it could perhaps be more easily engineered by elevating the park and walkways over the roads. A substantial amount of road would have to be covered over to make the sight and sound of the roads disappear. Sidewalks, or some of the sidewalks, disappearing underneath the elevated park could be sacrificed, replaced by elevated park pathways. The effect would be to put the fountain and triumphal arch in something like a bowl or amphitheater. There would also be a vantage of Prospect Park from this new hill and vice versa.

4. There is a possibility of shrinking the number and perhaps width of some of the interior traffic lanes.

5. It may not be in the offing, but some roadway and turn-off eliminations might be possible if some of the routes traveling through the plaza were converted to one-way.

6. Thought should be given to having the central traffic circle serve fewer roads. The roadways in and out of Prospect Park could possibly be eliminated. This would be consistent with the effort to have cars use the park less or not at all. A particularly great amount of roadway through the plaza is devoted to traffic using West Drive to exit Prospect Park. Similarly, should the turnoff from the traffic circle that allows cars to travel south on Unison Street be eliminated?

7. To the extent that cars will still travel through the plaza, thought could be given to baffling the noise from their wheels and some sort of ornamental screening that diminishes their visual impact.

Grand Army Plaza and the Unity Plan

It is worth noting that the community UNITY plan, proposed as a preferential plan for the development of the Vanderbilt Railyards (instead of the foundering Atlantic Yards plan), envisions creating a new related public square to the north on Flatbush Avenue. The UNITY plan designers had the forethought to consider the nearby Grand Army Plaza on a conceptually integrated basis. (See page 25 of the full downloadable version of the plan.)

The Yards forms the northern edge of a triangle that includes the Vanderbilt and Flatbush Avenue Corridors. One corner is defined by Grand Army Plaza. Another corner is formed by the Atlantic Terminal. Rather than increase the congestion around the Atlantic Terminal by adding even more density, we propose an alternative strategy that concentrates density at the Vanderbilt/Atlantic intersection. This will improve that currently underdeveloped intersection and create the opportunity for a large new public square at the Atlantic Terminal, providing an experience similar to Union Square. This results in a reasonable density that makes the project economically viable without overwhelming the neighborhood.

SOUND ABATEMENT / HIGHWAY NOISE ATTENUATION MEASURES

I would like to see more focus on highway sound and noise abatement measures.

I am thinking about this primarily in terms of New York City's extensive reclamation of the city waterfront for parkland. There has been a huge amount of new parkland becoming part of our lives. While pictures don't tell the story in this case, never has there been so much park land added to the city with such a high level of background noise.

The Battery Park City Promenade, in contradistinction to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, is one of the few places one can go for quite- where you might even hear water lapping the shore. The new Brooklyn Bridge Park has given some attention to what can be done about highway noise abatement but it is an example of a premier world class park with heavy public investment where highway noise from the BQE will be a prevalent factor notwithstanding. The portions of the Park that are already open are also quite affected by highway (and elevated train) noise from the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. Thankfully, the noise from the Brooklyn Bridge was substantially lowered years ago when a smooth road surface replaced the open metal grid surface on which cars used to travel when crossing the Bridge.

One way to sometimes escape the high noise volume in the new river parks is to go out to the end of park piers when they are available.

Cars are generally the greatest contributor of noise to the urban environment. The level of sound increases substantially when roadway traffic moves at high speed. Highway congestion temporarily abates noise. Rail is usually quieter except when elevated. On the West Side, again in the riverside parks, helicopters contribute very substantial noise in certain spots since they are, not only loud, but right at the water’s edge rather than landing out on piers.

Sound also behaves in ways that sometimes might not be expected. Just outside our building where we live on Montague Street it is really very quite. If you go up to our building’s new roof deck there is substantial highway noise audible from the BQE on the other side of Atlantic Avenue, quite a few blocks away.

Abating highway noise is challenging and a hard result to achieve. People are often uninformed about the science aspects of it which are also not easy to research. Nevertheless, this does not mean that results are not possible. And, there are major upcoming opportunities with, for instance, the rebuilding of the BQE cantilevering under the Brooklyn Heights promenade. More earth berms and other sound baffling measures along other areas of reclaimed waterfront would also be helpful. Speak to an engineer, but I suspect that, in some cases, berming or baffling only as far up as just above car tire levels may have a good effect. One example of how a berm can assure quite is the way that tree planted hills are used in Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza traffic Circle area. The Brooklyn Bridge is also an example where a difference was made by virtue of the new road surface the engineers substituted several years ago.

I should add to my mention of Grand Army Plaza above that the Project for Public Spaces is proposing that the Grand Army Plaza traffic flow be redesigned and this offers opportunity for even better noise reduction efforts in this area. I was told that the City has plans to actually effect some changes in about five years.

There are several places on the web site of the Project for Public Spaces where waterfalls are praised for their use in public spaces because they create “white noise” which gives a certain semblance of quietude. Creation of white noise is a worthwhile tactic to consider, but it is not the same as actually reducing noise. For instance, should you listen to an iPod in the white noise area you will still have to turn up the volume, perhaps uncomfortably, to hear it.

So I suggest that we focus not only be given to “sound” urban planning in New York but also to planning for reduced sound.

I am particularly interested in people who can point to the science associated with potential solutions.

(One of the people who has done work relating to this area is Arline L. Bronzaft.)